coLeSLAw
Self-Help (Potroast Records)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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Longtime Cosmik Debris readers will remember coLeSLAw was the visual identity of the magazine for the first two and a half years or more, the man who created our logo, the man who came up with all those bizarre covers you wanted to climb into and explore. Much to our shame, we didn't notice that he'd been gradually chewing through the chain on his leg iron, and he bolted to freedom, leaving us much less visual and quite a bit more lonely. We've often wondered where he went. Now we know.

Slaw always made ultra-cool music of the electro-acoustic variety, filled with the same voices, one suspectes, that reverberate in his head. Behind a heavy and deep soundtrack of space-piano and percussion is the voice of The Infinite Jimmy Shlepitz, self help tape god selling you everything, should you want it, and Jimmy is persistent. I've heard something similar to this attempted by another artist a few years back but it fell totally flat on its face. Why? It was humorless. It was all scare and no sneer. Not the case here. Even while you're jaw goes slack and you mumble "whoa," a giggle follows.

About twenty "whoa's" into the evening's entertainment, I realized that coLeSLAw had pulled a fast one one me. The music had lulled me into a state of trance with it's simple beauty and dark embellishments. At the 3:16 mark in "Inertia" I was a goner, easy prey for the only person I know who can make animal-shaped balloons from your brain. The tapes keep playing behind the music, but what are they selling? And who are they all? To quote Sally Field in Sybil "The people!! The people!!" It's going faster and faster and my chair is suddenly a rollercoaster in cahoots with Slaw, shooting me down a track I don't recognize at all as the voices... wait a minute... these aren't the same voices at all! Hold on one second here! This is the e##*

[Assoc. Ed. note: We've lost contact with the writer of the review. We are working on the problem. Meanwhile, send e-mail to coleslaw@serv.net for details on Self-Help. Hint: it's ten bucks!]

© 2001 - DJ Johnson